Jun 14, 2023
Controversial Italian Leader Silvio Berlusconi Dead at 86 Transcript
Silvio Berlusconi, the former Italian prime minister who was a force in politics there for years, has died at 86. Read the transcript here.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
[Italian 00:00:01].
Speaker 2 (00:01):
He was Italy’s most charismatic and controversial leader for a generation. Once a cruise ship singer, Silvio Berlusconi would reinvent himself as a real estate tycoon and media mogul, first revolutionizing Italian TV…
(00:17)
(Singing).
(00:17)
… and then Italian politics, becoming prime Minister for the first of three times in 1994. For 20 years, he would dominate Italian culture, despite or in part because of endless gaffs.
Speaker 1 (00:38):
[Italian 00:00:37] Barack Obama.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
Once calling former President Obama suntanned.
Speaker 1 (00:41):
[Italian 00:00:43].
Speaker 2 (00:42):
Another time saying it was better to like girls than be gay,-
Speaker 1 (00:46):
[Italian 00:00:48].
Speaker 2 (00:51):
… all while chumming up to dictators. He claimed he was always misunderstood, a victim of political correctness who fancied himself a modern day Casanova, who held Bunga Bunga sex parties at his mansions in Milan, in Sardinia, with guests none more notorious than an underage nightclub dancer known as Ruby the Heartstealer. He was tried for paying to sleep with her and sentenced to seven years in prison, but the charges were ultimately overturned.
Speaker 1 (01:17):
[Italian 00:01:19].
Speaker 2 (01:18):
The same scenario played out in over 20 separate trials, most for corruption, embezzlement, and bribery. In six of them, the charges were dropped because of new financial laws he passed that decriminalized them, or because the statute of limitations ran out.
Speaker 1 (01:34):
[Italian 00:01:35].
Speaker 2 (01:42):
The accusations, all fiction he would claim in court as he railed against liberal elites, leftist judges, and a hostile media despite owning TV channels, magazines and newspapers, not to mention, a championship soccer team. Finally, in 2013, he was definitively convicted of tax fraud and sentenced to four years in prison, commuted to just one year of community service at a nursing home due to his old age. But it marked the end of his foothold on the political center stage. His populist legacy was to show the world that people with more star power than political experience could rise to the highest offices of state. Chris Livesay, CBS News, Rome.
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